OP, I’m sorry you are in this situation. Your stats are impressive. It’s tough to be in your shoes. doubt that the letters of recommendations were bad, but if you are shy, the teachers might not know you that well.
Let’s focus on things you can actually do something about. I
Have you been admitted to a college that you would be happy to attend? If not, hope is not lost. There are still good colleges accepting applications and in early May, there will be a list of colleges that still have openings. Every year there are surprises.
What is your financial situation? How much can your parents afford to pay?
Hendrix College a nice liberal arts college in Arkansas appears to still be accepting applications.
Truman State, a public liberal arts honors college in Missouri usually doesn’t fill up and you would be an automatic admit. They appear to still be accepting applications.
New College of Florida a public liberal arts honors college has an April 15 deadline
Eckerd College in Florida is rolling admissions.
Would you consider applying to college in Scotland? University of Edinburgh and St Andrews are fine colleges and the deadline for international students is June 30th.
I was speaking about public schools that don’t require letters, sorry for the confusion. I know that for such selective schools getting rejected isn’t an anomaly, and I’m not saying that I think my app was amazing so therefore it had to be my counselor’s letter. I’m just wondering in the case I am rejected by a much less selective private like schools with close to 70% acceptance, I can’t help but think a huge reason would be the letters.
Overall, I was just wondering about the likelihood of a counselor or teacher writing outright negative things about a student and ways I could address this concern now or later on.
You can’t judge your own application though. I’ve seen you say two or three times that you think your app was amazing, but of course you do because you know all the work you put into it. You didn’t see anybody else’s. You can’t compare. I’m sure you definetely had a shot, but as others have said maybe they received a ton of applicants very similar to you, maybe something else. I would start considering the public schools you’ve heard back from (I’m assuming this by your distinction between public and private), or any school you have yet to hear from. You’ll end up somewhere you can do well, and if worst comes to worst, you can always transfer. I wouldn’t plan on that from the beginning, but it is an option.
Why wonder about something predicated on something that you won’t know about and hasn’t happened?
If someone shoots at me out of the blue, I would wonder if someone wants me dead,. But since I have little reason to believe that would happen, I don’t.
Or one can use this google docs crowd-sourced link about notification days (that I think just might be updated each year): (you know what to put here) /spreadsheets/d/14bYhV5U1FjfiOq7PM-Z8JjtK7xgxq8PKRBKXz0RqAo0/edit#gid=0
Without really substantial reasons to do so, it is very unlikely. You said earlier that you thought your teachers would say that you are ‘shy, quiet’ -why are you worried that a teacher would write something ‘outright negative’ about a ‘shy, quiet’ student?
As several posters have noted, you are more likely to be ‘damned by faint praise’ than for them to write ‘outright negative things’- unless of course there is more to the story than you have posted so far? were you persistent in getting your schedule changes, or did you do something overtly aggressive? Do you have discipline issues that your GC might have reported? If not, it is extremely unlikely that your GC and both recommenders would write ‘outright negative things’.
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@collegemom3717 I’m more concerned about my counselor letter than the teachers’, relatively speaking. For my counselor it was more of a persistent asking her to change my classes or schedule at the beginning of the school year this year and last year. I never did anything such as raise my voice or threaten her, nothing like that. I don’t have official discipline issues for her to report. I know she is very annoyed with me though, for the constant changes in my schedule. I know it’s my fault she pseudo hates me, and I regret it, and I regret I didn’t have the foresight to stop sooner. Most of these times it would be when I felt pressured to take many AP classes but then after following that schedule I felt it would be extremely hard to maintain a high GPA, so then I would go in and change it.
Now I’m just trying to understand the magnitude of the damage if it has been done…as in she has written negative things about me
Like I said, without knowing specific private colleges, it’s hard to say, although your stats sound very good for colleges which accept 70% of their applicants. If you are really bothered, go ask the counselor if you could see her recommendation letter.
If you were a jerk to your GC, then your recommendation may have been lukewarm. That’s a lesson – be nice to everyone. You never know who will be in a position to help you in the future.
It is your GC to get you into college. It looks bad on them if you don’t get in anywhere. They’re not going to write a negative letter. They may write a lukewarm letter, but not a negative letter.
Let’s say you did find out the GC wrote a negative letter (and I’m with the others that lukewarm is far more likely than not negative)…what would you do, what does it change? I’m not sure why you need this info, other than it gives you something to obsess about. The fact that you’re even concerned about means it’s a good life lesson. There will be more of these in the future - learn from them and move on.
Which goes to show you still don’t understand how the admission process works, or (more generally) how letters of rec are used.
Although the letters are nominally private there is always a chance they may be revealed. So instead of writing outright damning material most people that don’t like a person will use a code, “damning with faint praise”. It is well known, and several people have tried to explain it to you, but apparently without sticking.
Which of course is the purpose of such an approach. You can even show a parent who demands a letter for their Sally what you have written and they go away satisfied, while the recipient of the rec understands perfectly well what is being said between the lines. And as you’ve written, you’d be ok with such a letter!!
You say that you “regret” your behavior with the counselor. Do you “regret” it because you think it may have resulted in a lukewarm/negative letter or because you recognize that the behavior was inappropriate and truly regret it? It seems that the right thing to do at this point – regardless of the issues surrounding what she may or may not have written in a letter of recommendation – is to go in there and apologize.
Perhaps good karma will follow an apology. But don’t apologize for that reason.
These are very selective schools. Plenty of applicants with glowing letters of recommendation are rejected; plenty of students with stats like yours or better are being rejected. There are more highly qualified applicants than there are admissions slots. The school admissions counselors may simply prefer someone else over you - not so much as an outright rejection, but a decision not to accept.
It is a waste of time and energy to place blame on your teachers or guidance counselor. Do you have a tendency to blame others whenever something doesn’t go the way you’d like it to go? Is it easier to blame them than to look at mistakes you made, such as the ones scholardad pointed out? This may be a character issue that you might want to address at some point.
@mikemac Our school has an incredible number of students in the senior class alone (800+) and only a handful of counselors for the entire school. I think most of the letters would be lukewarm